Reviews of Jacinto Collahuazo School

The following reviews are from volunteers to this project. We ask them to fill in a form once they are finished so that we can evaluate the worth of the project and our own performance.

Name:
Email address:
Partner organisation:
Start date: 12/01/09
End date: 20/02/09

1. What were the main tasks you undertook at the project? Did you have any prior experience or knowledge that helped you with these? Main task was teaching English to children between the ages of 6 and 17 (among 5 different classes) teaching 2 lessons a day, both of 45 minutes. None of us had any previous teaching experience, however Conor and Hugh both speak Spanish which aided in the teaching of language.

1. Was the explanation and support you received from the organisation adequate to ensure you could carry out your work successfully? If not please explain why. Mainly left to our own devices but the support was there when we needed it. Previous material supplied by the charity was helpful but it was good to be able to do things independently.

1. Would you recommend working with this organisation to other volunteers? What are the main areas of skills and interests that volunteers need for this work? Please give reasons. Would recommend as it was a very worthwhile experience. Ideal qualities would be communication skills, in order to teach as well as integrate with the community, ability and desire to interact with children in their best interests, patience.

1. Was the communication and support you received from Yanapuma, before and during your time volunteering adequate? Please comment on the initial orientation session, showing you to your site and communication throughout.  If not, please specify why and how it could be improved. Before and after was definitely sufficient. Orientation at the community was rushed but this wasn’t a great problem. Some more time to buy food etc. in Tena would have helped a lot in the first few days. Also, didn’t know what to expect so some more time to get an idea of living conditions would be helpful.

1. How would rate your overall experience at this project? Rough living conditions but on reflection this added to the experience positively. Took time to get used to the pace of life in Ecuador. However, by the end of the project we felt integrated with the community and that our teaching efforts paid off.

1. Any other comments?

1. If you would like, please write a short paragraph summing up your project and experience volunteering, as well as if and why you might recommend this volunteer site to others in the future. We will put this information on our Volunteer Ecuador website, as a direct quote from you to help others learn about your experience.

Volunteering in Puca Chicta was a truly unique 6 weeks and one that we wouldn’t have predicted. Basic living conditions, friendly locals, enthusiastic and lively children made for a challenging but fulfilling teaching experience and meant we developed numerous skills throughout our time. Compared to many other organizations, the sense of independence and responsibility that we had meant we could do things as best we saw fit, without limitations. Highly recommended to all!

Muchas gracias!!!

Report about Puca Chicta

Volunteer profile

I am a 20 years old Swiss girl. I come from Geneva, Switzerland, so my first language is French. I speak English and Spanish quiet well, and I have a good knowledge of German and Italian. I graduated from high school in June 2008, and in September 2009 I am going to start university. I want to study ethnology, psychology and education. The aim of my stay in Ecuador was to test if I was going in the right direction with my studies, to take some time to change occupation, to do something useful and to learn from another way of life. I really wanted to do my best to adapt myself to the community’s life and get integrated.

Description of my stay in Ecuador and the volunteer project

I arrived in Quito at the beginning of January. I started by taking 4 weeks of classes with the Yanapuma Spanish School, while working as a volunteer in a school for disabled and normal children. Even if working in the centre was hard (first I had to take care of children suffering from cerebral paralysis, that is emotionally very demanding, and then of 4 years old children) I loved this time, and the volunteer job gave me a first experience as a teacher as well as an opportunity to practice Spanish.

Then, because other volunteers were already in Puca Chicta, I spent the month of February travelling to different communities of the Sierra, helped to organise week-end excursions for the Yanapuma students and did a two weeks volunteer in Bua to plant cacao trees in a clonally garden for a Yanapuma agricultural project.

Between March and June, I taught English during 3 months and a half in the school of Puca Chicta to students from 1st to 8th level. To study English is necessary for the students who want to pursue high school studies since there isn’t any official English teacher in the school. Three other groups of volunteer came before me during the past year, which means that the students already had a very basic knowledge of the language. When they aren’t any volunteer to teach, the head teacher gives the classes according to what he learned from the first volunteer, Paulien, who stayed 6 months in Puca Chicta, but he doesn’t know more about this language. I also gave English private daily lessons to a Kichwa guide of Chichicorumi and to a teacher living in Puca Chicta during about one month each. The Peace Corps volunteer that works now in Puca Chicta should go on giving classes to the teacher and I he will learn enough to be able to teach this language in the community one day.

I started living during one month with a host family, moved then to a house provided by the association Kamakmaki for volunteers, staid one month there and moved again to another host family until the end of my stay.

I came back to Quito with a great quantity of necklaces and bracelets made by the family mothers of the community, with the idea of selling them in Yanapuma’s Spanish school to the profit of the different families. So I passed my first days organizing it and writing this report, and then travelled during two more months to discover Ecuador.

Description of Puca Chicta

The community is located at the beginning of the Amazon forest, next to the Napo River, a few kilometres away from Tena, the capital city of the Napo province. The nature all around is luxuriant as well as beautiful, and the weather is warm and humid. However, it isn’t that hot; you always have some fresh air, and it is rare that rain lasts during the whole day, except from middle June to middle July that is the rainy season.

To get there, you can first to take a bus from Tena to Misahualli, that is a one hour ride, and then you need to rent a truck to get to Puca Chicta in about 30 minutes. Normally, a car arrives every morning to the community at 6 am, then another one with the teachers at 7.30 am and finally at 1 pm, the car comes back to bring the teachers back home. If you are alone, the trip costs $5, but if you share with other persons, you only pay $0, 50. You can also take a bus until Chichicorumi, a community situated in front of Puca Chicta, across the Napo River. The ride lasts 45 minutes, but then you need to cross the river with canoe, walk during about 10 minutes in the jungle and cross another leg of the Napo river to get to Puca Chicta. Normally, this leg of the river can be crossed by foot, but when it rains the water level grows so much that crossing becomes impossible.

Inside Chichicorumi there is a foundation named Kamakmaki where tourists can visit an ethnological museum, a small zoo and a garden with medicinal plants, as well as stay for the night in traditional houses or enjoy forest tours or cultural animations. The leader of this foundation is named Alonso Andi, and he is the owner of the house where Yanapuma’s volunteers normally stay when they are in Puca Chicta. The family is very nice, so you should really meet them. Chichicorumi also owns an internet access, a bar and two small shops where you can buy stuff like eggs, rice, tuna, oil, bread, tomatoes and onions.

Three hundred persons and forty three families live in Puca Chicta. In majority, the houses are made of wood, built on columns one or two meters above the ground. There is electricity, and a system of tubes drags water to the front of the houses from a pit situated in another community. However, the electricity is sometimes cut and when it rains a lot, the water from the tube becomes really dirty with mud. Moreover, when the weather is drier, the half of the community living further from the river doesn’t receive water anymore. Sometimes the tube also gets disconnected during a day, so you need to take water from a small stream that flows to the river. A group of Yanapuma volunteers should go this summer to Puca Chicta to see how to improve the water system. Of course, you need to boil the water before drinking it, but most of the community drinks it directly.

People live from agriculture (yucca, plantain, cacao, coffee, oranges and other regional products). The alimentation is basically composed of yucca, plantain and fish. With fermented manioc they also prepare a soft alcoholic drink called chicha. This drink is an integrant part of the culture and is served in every occasion. Everybody drinks it, even the smallest child, and very often it is used as a breakfast or a supper to fool hunger.  

The native language is Kichwa. It is taught in the community’s school and everybody speaks it, most of the time better than Spanish. However the parents seem to use more Spanish when they talk to their children and on the whole, the new generation tends to speak it less and less, even if they don’t master Spanish perfectly. But people of Puca Chicta are proud of their language, and they like to teach it to foreigners.

On the whole, the way of life in the community is still very traditional. People are proud of their culture and conscious of the importance to conserve it. Moreover, everybody is very nice and welcoming, and getting integrated is not a problem.

Education 

The school is bilingual Kichwa-Spanish and comprises 118 children from jardin to 8th level, which means between 5 and 16 years old. The school is composed of three buildings with a total of six classrooms, a kitchen-dining room and an office for the teachers. Another classroom was in construction when I left. In the office there is also one computer (two others were in reparation), a printer, English-Spanish dictionaries and various class books and English methods.

At the present time, there are eight teachers in the school. All of them are Kichwa speaking and live in Tena. When I arrived, there was only one teacher for the student of 1st and 2nd level, and another one for the students of 3rd and 4th level. But now, the children from the 1st to the 4th level have their own class teacher who gives them all the lessons, but the 3rd and 4th level share the same classroom. It makes it difficult to teach because of the noise. The new classroom in construction should permit to divide them, but I don’t know when it will be finished.

For the levels 5 to 8 different teachers teach a specific subject. The levels 5 and 6 form a unique class, but since there are only two students in 6th level, it is not a real problem. The material taught to the high school students are Kichwa, English, Spanish, maths, technical drawing, informatics, music, social studies (history and geography), natural sciences, productive techniques (they learn and practice how to work on agriculture and take care of the school’s plantation), physical education and typing on type writers. The teachers teach according to textbooks given by the government and forming part of the national program, and it seemed to me that the “learning by heart’s method” is the most used.    

A normal day of classes starts at 7:30 am, when the students receive a breakfast. The food is furnished by the government and is a glass of bleaching with a small packet of biscuits or a mixture of cereals. The classes start at 8 am and are separated in 45 minutes periods for the 5th to 8th level students. From 10:15 to 11 am, everybody eats lunch that the family mothers prepared with rice, yucca, plantain, beans onion and tuna. The family mothers are organized so that everyday, one of them comes to cook. They have to provide yucca, plantain and vegetables, but the rice, oil, tuna and salt are given by the government. However, during my time in Puca Chicta I could see that the quantities given weren’t sufficient for the whole school year and during the last month of classes the provision ended so that the children only received herbal tea with fried plantain on the morning, and a very liquid soup of plantain, yucca and some remaining of rice and tuna for lunch. After that, the classes normally continue until 12:30 pm for the levels 1 to 4 and 13:15 pm for the levels 5 to 8.

On the whole, the teaching conditions are poor. Each classroom contains a whiteboard with markers, but two or three students share the same pupil. It can become quiet problematic, especially during the exams, because they copy each other as they like. Since the windows are a simple hole without any glass to isolate, you hear the noise of the whole school from your classroom, and the occasions of distraction are numerous. When it is raining, the noise of the water on the tin roof is so loud that it becomes almost impossible to teach. The money given by the government to buy material seems to be insufficient, and when I arrived to the school, most of the markers to write on the board were already so old that they didn’t write any more. We used a part of money that I had raised in Switzerland to buy new ones, and there are some left for the next school year.
Other volunteers also donated material at the end of my time in the school, so I think that for the moment they have most of what they need.

Another problem is that within the same class, especially with the youngest ones, there can be big differences of level between the students. Many times, an exercise I gave was too easy for a part of the class, that means that they finished very quickly, got bored and started to do other things that perturbed the other part of the class for whose the exercise presented real difficulties. I could also see that in each class there are a few students who seem to have lost their motivation to learn, that means that some of them attend passively to the classes without doing anything, and others become perturbations. The reason for those behaviours can be either that their level is under the general level, so they have lost their self-esteem and have given up trying, or it is above so the classes are boring for them. I think that some students also didn’t really get the importance of education which is a problem I will speak later about.

Those differences of level between the children are caused by various factors, but the principal ones are I think age, language and preschooler preparation. It is obvious that in the same class, all the children aren’t at the same level in their physical as well as in their intellectual development. Normally, the students start the first level at the age of 6 years old, but it seems that sometimes, some families wait more before sending them to school. About the language, it is important to remember that the community native language is Kichwa, and the adults commonly use it when they speak together. I could see that they use more Spanish to talk to their children, but new government rules encourage the parents to speak in their native language with the younger ones. It means that all of the kids aren’t at the same level in their training of Spanish when they start school. It is also important to know that in a general manner, the adults don’t master Spanish perfectly. Finally, the jardin, or maternal, for the children before 6 years old, has only been existing for one year in the community school, but an organization (Fodi) works in the community to give to children a preschooler preparation. However, not all of the children have been attending to this preparation regularly.

Another problem is the discipline and the organization within the school. Most of the students pay little attention to the classes and always talk, stand up, try to play or even go out from the classroom as they want. They do not use agendas, and many do not do their homework. They also won’t revise before a test. Corporal punishments have been forbidden in the school, that is of course a good thing, but I have the feeling that since then, the teachers haven’t found other ways to get obeyed. An obvious example is that they continue to carry wood sticks when they want attention, even if they don’t really use them. To me, it seems that clear rules and a kind of sanction when those rules aren’t respected is what is most missing in Puca Chicta’s school. During my time in the school, there have been three cases of children robbing stuff in the community, but except a long talk from the headmaster, nothing happened to the culprits.

It is also important to remember that the process of education is much less advanced in Puca Chicta than in Europe or in the US. Many old people do not know how to read and write, and most of the topical parents did not attend a high school. It means that they cannot help much their children with their homework and won’t always give the good educational basis about how to learn and why it is important. However, it seems to me that most of the parents want their children to succeed in their studies and at the parental sessions I attended during my time in the community, the majority of the parents were present.

It is interesting to notice that art and culture form an integral part in the education. The students learn at school how to make the traditional handicraft and they often have to present shows consisting in dancing or singing for regional events. The oldest ones sometimes organize small dramas too. Moreover, they learn how to work on agriculture as a part of the scholar program, planting yucca and plantain or flowers to decorate the school. When I left the community, a project was being born between a family father and the topical Peace Corps volunteer to start an organic garden with vegetables in the school to improve the general alimentation and teach organic methods.

On the whole, keep in mind that you will have to adapt yourself to children that are more used to play in the nature or work in a plantation than to seat in a classroom, and that the educational methods that work in Europe or in the US aren’t the same that will work in this school. It was also sometimes confusing and frustrating to see the little importance that some students give to their scholar results. It was difficult to get results with exercises that demand active reflexion, even the simplest ones, or because the children didn’t get what they had to do, or because they didn’t want to make the effort. What worked best with my classes were songs, repetitions, simple and active games or drawings and paintings. With the children from 1st to 4th level, I almost only taught vocabulary using more orals methods, but I tried to give basis of grammar to the high school students.

For me, it has been difficult to be alone giving classes in those conditions and without any preparation, especially to the youngest ones, because it was impossible to give assistance to all the children and some of them were always left behind. The few times I received help from other volunteers, the results were much better because it was possible to make smaller groups according to the level of each student. Like this, the interaction between the student and the teacher was much better and it was easier to have them obey.

The work done before me

Before me, three other groups of volunteers taught English in the school. The most effective work was done by Pauline, the first volunteer, who staid about 6 months in the community during the school year 2007-2008. She bought English methods for the levels 4 to 8, but since the children kept the book after she left, some of them were lost. However, the majority is remaining, so a next volunteer could use them to teach if he asks the director where to find them. Then Pamela and Sophie worked at the school during a bit more than one month and then created an English book for the children. The method is really nice, and a next volunteer could also work with it. However, the children don’t own it for the moment, so you would have to print it first for everybody. I left a copy of this method with other material in an envelope in the school office’s cupboard, and you can also find it at Yanapuma’s office. Finally a group of three boys gave classes during two months just before me, but a large part of this time was included in the carnivals holidays so not all of the children attended the classes.

When there isn’t any volunteer in the school, the headmaster gives English classes to the high school students, revising what was done with Pauline. It makes it possible because she wrote him how to pronounce each word she taught. I also left some material of the same kind about what I taught and a bit more, so that the headmaster can go on teaching.

On the whole, the children forget a lot between each volunteer. Each time, the new teachers need to revise the basis, but the children start to be bored to repeat the same thing again and again. Another problem is that within the same class, there can be huge differences between what the student actually understood or remember. I think the school really needs somebody with an experience as a teacher who would stay at least six months, and a better communication between each volunteer should be organized in order to be able to follow a program. A good way to do that would be that Yanapuma asks to each volunteer to describe in detail what and how he taught, and then pass the information to the next volunteer with anticipation.

The different organizations working with the community

There are various organizations working with Puca Chicta. The project Compassionis an evangelical project that has been working in the community for 16 years. The project owns a church, an office that contains a small library with scholar material, two computers and a printer, a big dining room, a kitchen and a few classrooms. From Monday to Wednesday between 1 and 4 p.m. children from Puca Chicta and other neighbouring communities receive assistance there, that is to say religious education, scholar accompaniment and dinner. Some of the children (not more than two for families) also profit of a godfathering to help them with their studies (people of other countries send money once a month to help the children, and they communicate with them by letters), and health issues are also treated. Within the community, the project is run by persons living in Puca Chicta or in the neighbouring communities, but it depends on an office located in Quito. The organization works at level international, and I think that the principal seat is in the US.

Another Evangelical organization named FEINE works with the community, in association with two other international organizations of the reformed church, Fenakin and CWSRC. They have been involved in the community for about twenty years and helped with projects like setting up plantations of cloned cacao, giving a communitarian dressing-case to sell medicines in the community, giving credits to buy plantain and corn and building chicken hatcheries. They also capacitate health agents within the community during three years periods, giving them a formation about health and hygiene, how to recognize various illnesses, which medicaments to use and how to cure with medicinal plants. In addition, they give them a $600 credit to work with health issues. At the end of their time, the health agents receive a kind of licence.

The Ecuadorian ONG Kallari recently started to work with the community, giving cocoa plants to various families and teaching how to grow them organically. The organization will then buy the cocoa beans to make chocolate and export it fairly.

I also heard that an organization gave extensive training on traditional handicrafts to about ten family mothers of the community, to teach them new methods and complete their knowledge, but I don’t know more about this organization.

The project FODI, depending on the municipality of Tena and working with the community for nine years, takes care of the small children from zero to five years with a program of day nursery. It also works with parents about educational issues and encourages them to own infantile games as well as a garden in each family with medicinal and ornamental plants, fruits and vegetables.

In addition, a distance high school program, depending on the “Dirección Hispana” of the Ecuadorian government, started to work in the community eight years ago. It gives the opportunity to teenagers to pursue their studies without going out from the community. The students receive one day of classes by week, on Friday, Saturday or Sunday according to their level, and they need to work by their own the rest of the week. Three teachers work their, two of them living in Puca Chicta and the third one in Tena. At least one of them hasn’t finished his studies, and he is at the present time following a distance program with a university in Quito. They give English classes, but none of them knows this language. 

The organisation Peace Corps, depending on the US government, also works with the community, sending a unique volunteer at the time for a two years or more period. The objective of this volunteer is to work with the community to see how to set up a development project in accord with the topical needs and wishes. A house is built for those volunteers in the front of the school. The last project, run by Andrew who left at the beginning of April 2009, was the building of basins where to cultivate fishes. A new volunteer arrived at the beginning of May and started to investigate in the community to find a new project. When I left, she was thinking about working on environment and garbage problem, or on alcohol problem, or to start an organic garden with vegetables in the school with the idea of encouraging every families of the community to do the same.

Finally, the foundation Kamakmaki in Chichicorumi supports the community, and by its intermediary the foundation Yanapuma that started to work with the community 1 year ago. Besides sending individual volunteers to teach English in the community’s school, it also sends groups of fifteen of twenty people to help on various construction projects. These last volunteers come from an organization named Leap, based in England, and they normally stay three weeks in Puca Chicta, living with host families and sharing the life of the community. Their last project was to build a new classroom for the school, but other groups also helped with the construction of a garden with medicinal plants and a building to raise chickens. However, the garden has been abandoned and I had never heard about the chicken building before coming back to Quito.

The community’s intern organization

The community is lead by an elected president for one year (at the present time Lisandro Licuy*), and there is also a vice president, a treasurer (Jacobo Shiguango assumes these two functions) and a secretary (Luis Andy*). Sessions are often organized to discuss about various topics like the organization of mingas (communitarian work), parties and special events or decisions. These sessions can last a whole day and a representative for each family has to be present. The persons who refuse to help or participate to the communitarian works have to pay a fine.

*I’m not totally sure of the surnames

There is also a president of the family fathers who leads the school meetings with the headmaster (Pedro Licuy, the vice headmaster is at the present Salome Grefa) and the school’s secretary (Theodoro). These meetings work in the same way as the community’s ones, with a representative of each children’s families, but I observed that there are some tensions between the community and the school, especially about money.

Health, hygiene and alimentation

About health, I could see that many children suffer from problems like fever, diarrhoea and vomit owed I think to the bacteria present in the water. I also observed a lot of people, especially children, with abnormally big bellies, other sign of bacteria or malnutrition. Indeed the big majority of people drink the water directly from the tube without boiling it.

When people are sick, they usually try to cure themselves with medicinal plants, but I saw that in many cases, they also buy medicaments. However, I am not sure that they visit a doctor before taking these medicaments and if they really know how to use them. There isn’t any doctor in Puca Chicta, but two persons have already been formed by the organization Fenakin to be health promoter, and two others are at the present time in formation. Moreover, there is a health centre in Misahualli, about 30 minutes away from Puca Chicta in truck. The shaman can also be visited in some cases, but normally, people first go to the hospital and they go to the shaman only if they cannot get cured there and think that the illness is owed to a bewitchment.

About hygiene, the school teaches basic stuff like washing its hands and its face after eating but on the whole, it seems to me that the general knowledge on this topic is quiet poor. Most of the people don’t wash there hands with soap before eating, preparing food or chicha or curing a wound, there isn’t any problem to use the same brush to wash yucca or clothes, animals are free to go wherever they want, child’s urine or excrements aren’t washed very carefully and during the parties, the same glass passes from mouth to mouth without any kind of cleaning. The normal way to greet is to shake hands, and during my time in the community I could observe a kind of eye infection’s epidemic, certainly transmitted by this contact.

About alimentation, it is basically composed of yucca, plantain and fish but on the whole, people eat few vitamins and proteins. I heard that statistics from the Misahualli’s health centre showed last year that 70% of Puca Chicta’s population suffers from malnutrition. For me, a big problem is the chicha, because it is often taken in place of dinner, even by the youngest ones. However, except filling the stomach and intoxicating a little bit, it really doesn’t feed. I think that the project Compassion does a great work giving children a complete meal from Monday to Wednesday, because neither the quantities given at school nor what they receive in many of there homes are much. I also observed that people in the community drink a lot of alcohol, especially during the parties and the week-end, but also at night when they visit from house to house and receive huge quantities of chicha. Even the babies drink chicha, and I think that this custom has the bad effect to develop a high tolerance to alcohol and encourage alcoholism.

Religion

Because of the project Compassion many people in Puca Chicta are Evangelical, and there is a small church and a pastor in the community. However, many people also don’t have any religion. I am not part of any religion, but from my experience I think that the values taught by the church in the community have a good effect, especially on alcohol and women’s respect issues. However, Evangelism also causes a loss of the traditions and even if many faiths and legends about Nature’s power still exist, animistic cults have been abandoned except by the shamans. But there isn’t any in Puca Chicta. Moreover, since weddings cost a lot of money, lot of people live together without being married.

Conclusion

On the whole, I really enjoyed my time in Puca Chicta and I think that I fulfilled my objectives. I am more than ever convinced that I chose the right studies, even if I am now thinking about completing it with something about agriculture. From my experience, I think that the best way to help communities is first to understand them and their needs and then teach them how to solve their problems or improve their way of life by themselves and in a responsible way. Even if I had to pass by a lot of disillusion about what I could actually teach to the children, I eventually think that I left something that will be useful to some of them. I am also very glad that I could give private lessons to motivated persons for whom English will serve, and that at least one of them will go on with his classes.
On a personal status, I think that this experience taught me a lot, helped me to think about myself, my limitations, my own culture and way of life, and gave me more self confidence and open mind. I am also plenty satisfied of the way I integrated myself to the community, especially thanks to the two families that hosted me and treated me as one of their daughter, and to the team of teachers that accepted immediately, even if it was sometimes frustrating not to be able to speak Kichwa.
About Yanapuma, in a general way I have been satisfied by the help of the foundation and I think that it is doing a great job, but it seems to me that it should have a better knowledge of what is happening in the community, especially about the different organizations that already support Puca Chicta, in order to coordinate the different projects.
I also think that the foundation should be more exigent with the volunteers, ask them a better preparation before going to the community, give them more information to help them and require a report of activity more complete at the end of the volunteer job. Maybe what is missing is clarity, because it is not that evident if the volunteers are going to the community for themselves, as a cheaper way to do tourism and spend good time, or if their objective is actually to work and help. I think that each volunteer should first of all go to work and help, but since Yanapuma might give the impression to take a bit easy the work they will do in the community, that it doesn’t really give the opportunity to prepare itself before going to the community or doesn’t seem to think it is necessary, and more than everything that it doesn’t ask for many details once the work has been done might lead some volunteers to think that there are in holydays and that responsibility isn’t required from them.
I have also been a bit shocked by the attitude of two LEAP groups that I met in Puca Chicta and Chichicorumi and by there lack of responsibility and open mind in front of the community. I think that the influence of a big group of foreigners, rich, young and beautiful, can be huge on a poor community of this kind, and that attitudes of despise from them hurt much more than what they think. They should also be more careful about the new desires that they can bring to the community, especially desires in relationship with new technologies and modernity that aren’t for the moment necessary in the community (two attitudes especially shocked me: the foreigners smoking in front of the school in Puca Chicta during the students’ break and the ones in Chichicorumi watching violent movies during the dinner in a room full of children). In the case of Puca Chicta, it seemed to me that neither the community nor many persons in the LEAP group were prepared to the cultural shock, and here again, a more intensive preparation before going to the community could be useful.
Finally, I had the feeling that what is more missing in Puca Chicta is education and organization, but since they are starting to be used to receive help from foreign organizations, they don’t always see the point of actually working by themselves to get what they want.
I give these last points with the hope that they can deepen reflections and lead to an improvement.

Intern evaluation form
Name (optional):
Time spent in Quito: More or less 1 month and a half
Time spent in the community: 3 month and a half
Was your work with Yanapuma for academic credit or course requirements? No

Introductory stages, information
Before arriving in Ecuador
Were you well-informed about Yanapuma and its mission before your arrival?
Yes, more or less, from the internet site and the Newsletter.
Were all your questions answered before arrival?
Yes but because I asked a lot. I sometimes had the feeling that if I hadn’t insisted, I wouldn’t have received much. Everything became clearer after my arrival in Quito.
Did you have a clear idea about your project?
I knew I would go to Puca Chicta to teach English but I didn’t have a clear idea of how was Puca Chicta, the school and the level of my students.
After arriving in Ecuador
Did you feel welcome upon your arrival in Ecuador and in the Yanapuma office in Quito?
I first felt a bit lost because my first contact was my host family and I didn’t exactly know when I would meet somebody from Yanapuma since I arrived a Thursday and started my classes on the next Monday. But finally, I met Steven on Friday afternoon and from the moment I had started my classes, everything has been fine.
Were the meetings with Yanapuma staff members sufficient for answering your questions and planning your project? Please specify.
The only meeting I had with Steven gave me the opportunity to ask the questions I had and give me a better idea of the job I would do there, so yes, it was sufficient. I think that the most important for a volunteer is to know that in case of problem or interrogation during his time in the community, there will always be somebody of the foundation available to help him, and it has been the case for me.
Were the meetings with Yanapuma staff members sufficient for making you well-prepared for going to the community?
I would have expected a bit more. I only had one meeting about Puca Chicta, one month and a half before going there, and the information that the other volunteers left before me was insufficient to really prepare myself. I had to discover almost everything when I arrived to the community and I was forced to improvise a lot at the beginning of my classes. I had the feeling that I only started to get organized and to understand how to teach in an efficient way one month after my arrival in the community, that is a lot since I only staid three months and a half in Puca Chicta. More precise information and pieces of advice left by other volunteers might have helped me to do better. I also missed some very important information like the fact that Pauline had donated English books to all the students.
Any additional comments?
For me, Yanapuma should be stricter with the volunteers or clearer with them, because it is not that evident wether we are going to the community for us, to spend a good time, or to actually work and help. I think that each volunteer should first of all go to work and help, but since Yanapuma gives sometimes  the impression to take a bit easy the work we will do in the community, that it doesn’t really give the opportunity to prepare itself before going to the community or doesn’t seem to think it is necessary, and more than everything that it doesn’t ask for many details once the work has been done might lead some volunteers to think that there are in holydays and that responsibility isn’t required from them. 
A better communication between each volunteer should also be organized in order to be able to follow a program. A good way to do that would be that Yanapuma asks each volunteer to describe in detail what and how he taught, and then pass the information to the next volunteer with anticipation.

Housing
Did the housing in Quito live up to your expectations? Please specify.
Yes, I really loved leaving in Susana’s house because it gave me the opportunity to practice Spanish and not to be alone. I had a very good relationship with her.
Did the housing in the community live up to your expectations? Please specify (food, bed, water, family).
When I first arrived, I was supposed to stay in the volunteers’ house of Puca Chicta, but we actually realised that the information hadn’t passed and that the key of the house had been lost. So I finally staid the first month with a family while Juan from Chichicorumi was building a new floor to improve the volunteers’ house. Then I lived alone in this house during one month and I spent the last month and a half with another family. Even if the volunteers’ house is now really comfortable (the second floor where I lived is all made of wood, with a nice terrace from where you see the community’s stadium, a hamaca, electricity, and in the kitchen I even had an oven and a fridge) my best time has been with the last family, because they really accepted me as their daughter and thanks to them I could learn more about the community’s way of life and get integrated. Of course, the living conditions are very simple, but that’s part of the experience and I didn’t suffer from it. Moreover, I love these houses of wood where people from this region live, that’s what is best adapted to the climate!
About the water, just be careful with the chicha if you are sensible from the stomach, the water used to make it isn’t boiled. The adaptation to the food might also be hard (yucca and plantain with each meal and fishes or chicken heads sometimes in your soup) but it worth it; people love it when you eat everything like them.
Any additional comments?

Working and living in the community
How did you find the first contact with the community?

On the whole, everybody was nice and welcoming, but at the same time, it was hard to have real friendships. The social relationships are based a lot on the family, so when you are alone, it can be hard to create links. That’s also why I preferred to live with a family.

Did you carry out the work you were set to do? If not, why?
Yes I did, I taught English during three months and a half in the school, and even if it wasn’t easy everyday, I think I finally get to good results with my students.
Do you feel that you contributed to the development in the community? If yes, how?
I think that for the students who want to go on with there studies, learning English with me was a help. I am also glad because I gave classes to a teacher from Puca Chicta whose dream would be to learn enough to then teach English in the community. He was very motivated and should go on the classes with the Peace Corps volunteer that is now staying in Puca Chicta. Even if these are small things, I think that it was a contribution in the development of the community. I also tried as much as possible to give a good example, be punctual responsible and organized, especially in front of the children, brought new way of educations and new ideas, and here again, even if it were small things, I hope it left some seeds. 
Did the community members cooperate with you and your project? If not, what do you think could be the reasons?
I especially worked with the school’s headmaster (Pedro Licuy), and even if he always seemed motivated by my ideas, he didn’t like the idea of taking responsibilities or support me to change things. I think he was afraid of what would think the community. For example, a problem in the school is the lack of discipline and communication between the teachers and the parents, so I talked to him about something we use in Switzerland; each student has a small book where the teacher writes every time he breaks a law. After three annotations, there is a penalty and every two weeks, the kid has to make his parents sign the book. It is a way of keeping control and encourage responsibility, because the student knows exactly what he can do or not, and what will be the consequences. The headmaster thought it was a good idea and encouraged me to try it, but he would only start to use it too if he saw it worked with me. Of course, without the school’s support, it wasn’t applicable, so I abandoned it. 
Another problem is that all the school meetings, communitarian sessions or even discussions with different members of the communities were in Kichwa, so it was sometimes very hard to get information or discuss about projects or ideas.
What has been the best part of working and living in the community?

At the end of my stay, I really started to feel and think as a Kichwa and to feel integrated. From the beginning, I tried to do everything like the people of the community because my main objective was to enter in or live another life, and I eventually received the fruits of my work. The best has really been the sum of small successes; when I could see that a class had gotten what I was teaching, when I realized that I understood better Kichwa, when somebody invited to his house for a meal and finally, when the community organized a great party for me for my departure where at least 30 persons staid until midnight to dance.

What have been the greatest obstacles in relation to working and living in the community?
                                                                                         
The first shock of discovering the huge differences between education in Switzerland and Ecuador was hard. I had to use a lot of patience and sometimes, my classes were so frustrating that I almost lost my motivation. I also felt alone many times, even if on the whole, I think that I have been lucky because it might have been worse. It isn’t easy to be the only white person in a community like this, and it asked me lot of efforts and energy to erase little by little the gap.

What is your advice for other interns in relation to living and working with the community that you were in (or working with communities in general)?

First of all, you need to accept that you won’t be able to change all the things that are going wrong around you, so the best is to be patient, decided without being offensive and ready to make compromises. On the whole, I could observe that if you are too direct, you will only get reactions of defence and maybe loose communication. Do things slowly and with a smile. Also try to understand before judging or acting, the cultural gap can create many misunderstandings.
I am also convinced that the more you try to live like the indigenous, talk to them, eat and drink with them, work with them, show interest in their way of life, try to learn there language etc, the more you will get accepted. Once you are accepted, it will be much easier to get the good information at the right time or receive help when you need it. You will also learn much more by this way.

Any additional comments?
I just found amazing how the time revealed me different level of the same reality. After one week in the community I had reached a first level, and then little by little, new things appeared to me and made me enter deeper in the comprehension of the way of life. Somebody told me one day that after one month in a community, you can write a book, after one year you write a chapter and after ten year you don’t write anything because the reality is so complex that you can’t really explain it.

Working with Yanapuma
How did you find the guidance you received from Yanapuma during your stay in Quito?

Yanapuma has always been there to answer my questions and give me pieces of advice when I needed it but otherwise it left me work alone. That was fine for me.

How did you find the guidance you received from Yanapuma during your stay in the community?

It was the same and on the whole, I was satisfied with it, but sometimes, I would have liked meet somebody of the foundation only to discuss, make the point, share ideas and receive the confirmation that I was going in the right direction. A friend visited me at the middle of my stay and the fact to talk to somebody extern to the community has been a great help for me.

What do you think has been the best part of your work with Yanapuma?

The best part has been all the opportunities I had of staying in different communities thanks to Yanapuma’s contacts. Since I am most of all interested in discovering how people live in the countries I visit, I loved having the opportunity of staying alone with families in Iluman, Cotacachi, Salasaca, Bua, Estero de Plàtano, Puca Chicta and Chichicorumi. I also like the freedom that the foundation gives to personal initiatives and independence, even if in some cases I would have appreciated more guidance.

What have been the greatest obstacles in relation to working with Yanapuma?

I don’t think I really met obstacles.

Any additional comments?

Ideas and recommendations

What is your advice for future interns working with Yanapuma and its communities?

Please, try to be as responsible as possible. The fact that people in communities seem sometimes to take things very easy doesn’t mean you can do the same. On the contrary, always be patient, treat the others as you would like them to treat you and try to show the good example. People seem sometimes very disorganized and irresponsible and if they see that the white guy does the same, they won’t even think there behaviour is wrong.
Also try to leave as much information about your work as possible to Yanapuma, so that a next volunteer can go on with your project. So many good seeds eventually dry because nobody went on giving water.

What is your advice for Yanapuma in relation to its work with interns and communities?

In a general way I have been satisfied by the help of the foundation and I think that it is doing a great job, but it seems to me that it tries to do a lot of things without knowing very precisely what exactly happens in each community. In the case of Puca Chicta, I especially think that it should have a better knowledge about the different organizations that already support Puca Chicta (look at my report about Puca Chicta), in order to coordinate the different projects.
I also think that the foundation should be more exigent with the volunteers, ask them a better preparation before going to the community, give them more information to help them and require a report of activity more complete at the end of the volunteer job.
Moreover, I have been a bit shocked by the attitude of two LEAP groups that I met in Puca Chicta and Chichicorumi and by there lack of responsibility and open mind in front of the community. I think that the influence of a big group of foreigners, rich, young and beautiful, can be huge on a poor community of this kind, and that attitudes of despise from them hurt much more than what they think. They should also be more careful about the new desires that they can bring to the community, especially desires in relationship with new technologies and modernity that aren’t for the moment necessary in the community (two attitudes especially shocked me: the foreigners smoking in front of the school in Puca Chicta during the students’ break and the ones in Chichicorumi watching violent movies during the dinner in a room full of children). In the case of Puca Chicta, it seemed to me that neither the community nor many persons in the LEAP group were prepared to the cultural shock, and here again, a more intensive preparation before going to the community could be useful.
Finally, I had the feeling that what is more missing in Puca Chicta is education and organization, but since they are starting to be used to receive help from foreign organizations, they don’t always see the point of actually working by themselves to get what they want.
I give these last points with the hope that they can deepen reflections and lead to an improvement.

Any additional comments?